Quotes About Coping

They are able to listen, to identify with others; they are outgoing, concerned, and usually less prone to illusions than the figures we see them encountering. As they have experienced honesty and unconditional affection in their early years, they are better able to cope with their lives than those who are fed on illusions and later have to fight to find out the truth about themselves, like Claudia, Anika, Helga, or Lilka.

Gradually, she realizes how she is forced to look for distraction when she is moved, upset, or sad. (When a six-year-old's mother died, his aunt told him: "You must be brave; don't cry; now go to your room and play nicely")

The life-saving function of repression in childhood is transformed in adulthood into a life-destroying force.

It was as if she had a murderous needle somewhere in her lungs, and by breathing carefully, she could avoid feeling it. But every once in a while she had to take a deep breath, and it was still there.

She sat in her room on the couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like a stone. Curl the edges of yourself up and fold them under where no one can see. ~pg 29, Susie's sister Lindsey dealing with grief.

Oh sweetheart, do you really think if you seal it up, that the pain's gonna go away?

No one knew how he continued to do what he did, while simultaneously they wanted him to shut all signs of his grief away, place it in a file somewhere and tuck it in a drawer that no one would be asked to open again.

Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before.

It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I come to know trees fear man.

T}here is a point at which even grief feels absurd. And at this point, laughter gushes up to retrieve sanity.

But it ain't easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain't there, trying to do without him is a strain.

Yeah, I say. He make it up in cigarettes, sell 'em for a dime. It rot your breath, I say, but yall want to try one? Not if it make us crazy, say Sofia. It hard enough to get by without being a fool.

Já é duro o bastante tentar levar a vida sem ser maluco.

The brilliance of enslaving the spirit is that it is an invisible prison from which the inmate appears to derive some comfort.

Perhaps I'm being histrionic, trying to displace my actual grief with this imaginary trauma.

Under pressure, men drink alcohol and invade other countries; women eat chocolate and go shopping.

Knowledge is not necessarily enough to beat the nicotine trap.

A smoker's reaction to any stressful situation is to light a cigarette.

I closed my mind, prayed it wouldn't be me, kept my head firmly in the sand and hoped that I would wake up one morning with no desire to smoke.

Taking a pill is passive. In contrast, psychotherapy puts the patient in charge by instilling new coping skills and attitudes toward life.

Patienthood can become a way of life and rationale for people who are struggling for other reasons.

Humor can alter any situation and help us cope at the very instant we are laughing.

Work was a balm. Adrenaline distracted him from sorrow.

Oftentimes,' murmured Whirrun, 'a man's better served embracing his pain than trying to escape it. Things are smaller when you face 'em.